Sheryl Sandberg is the chief operating officer of Facebook and best-selling author of Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead.
Born in Washington, D.C. in 1969, Sandberg went to Harvard for her bachelor’s degree in economics and worked at the World Bank after graduating summa cum laude. She attended Harvard Business School and went to work in the U.S. Department of the Treasury during the Clinton administration. When the Republicans swept the Democrats out of office in November 2000, Sandberg moved to Silicon Valley and worked for Google. After seven years she then moved to Facebook, where she has been COO since 2008. Sandberg is the author of Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead, which has sold more than a million copies.
Below you will find the best inspirational quotes from Sandberg’s book.
“In the future, there will be no female leaders. There will just be leaders.”
“There is no perfect fit when you’re looking for the next big thing to do. You have to take opportunities and make an opportunity fit for you, rather than the other way around. The ability to learn is the most important quality a leader can have.”
“Careers are a jungle gym, not a ladder.”
“Fortune does favour the bold and you’ll never know what you’re capable of if you don’t try.”
“If you’re offered a seat on a rocket ship, don’t ask what seat! Just get on.”
“Women need to shift from thinking ‘I’m not ready to do that’ to thinking ‘I want to do that- and I’ll learn by doing it.’
“But the upside of painful knowledge is so much greater than the downside of blissful ignorance.”
“Success and likeability are positively correlated for men and negatively for women. When a man is successful, he is liked by both men and women. When a woman is successful, people of both genders like her less.”
“I have never met a woman, or man, who stated emphatically, ‘Yes, I have it all.’ Because no matter what any of us has – and how grateful we are for what we have – no one has it all.”
“When woman work outside the home and share breadwinning duties, couples are more likely to stay together. In fact, the risk of divorce reduces by about half when a wife earns half the income and a husband does half the housework.”
“I realised that searching for a mentor has become the professional equivalent of waiting for Prince Charming. We all grew up on the fairy tale Sleeping Beauty, which instructs young women that if they just wait for their prince to arrive, they will be kissed and whisked away on a white horse to live happily ever after. Now young women are told that if they can just find the right mentor, they will be pushed up the ladder and whisked away to the corner office to live happily ever after. Once again, we are teaching women to be too dependent on others.”
“Being confident and believing in your own self-worth is necessary to achieving your potential.”
“A truly equal world would be one where women ran half our countries and companies and men ran half our homes.”
“We compromise our career goals to make room for partners and children who may not even exist yet”
“Real change will come when powerful women are less of an exception. It is easy to dislike senior women because there are so few.”
“The gender stereotypes introduced in childhood are reinforced throughout our lives and become self-fulfilling prophesies. Most leadership positions are held by men, so women don’t expect to achieve them, and that becomes one of the reasons they don’t.”
“The reason I don’t have a plan is because if I have a plan I’m limited to today’s options”
“The more women help one another, the more we help ourselves. Acting like a coalition truly does produce results. Any coalition of support must also include men, many of whom care about gender inequality as much as women do.”
“Our culture needs to find a robust image of female success that is first, not male, and second, not a white woman on the phone, holding a crying baby,”
“If a woman pushes to get the job done, if she’s highly competent, if she focuses on results rather than on pleasing others, she’s acting like a man. And if she acts like a man, people dislike her.”
“A feminist is someone who believes in social, political, and economic equality of the sexes.”
“But instead of blaming women for not negotiating more, we need to recognise that women often have good cause to be reluctant to advocate for their own interests because doing so can easily backfire.”
“Feeling confident – or pretending that you feel confident – is necessary to reach for opportunities. It’s a cliché, but opportunities are rarely offered; they’re seized.”
“Long-term success at work often depends on not trying to meet every demand placed on us. The best way to make room for both life and career is to make choices deliberately—to set limits and stick to them.”
“Hard work and results should be recognised by others, but when they aren’t, advocating for oneself becomes necessary. As discussed earlier, this must be done with great care. But it must be done.”
“Anyone who brings up gender in the workplace is wading into deep and muddy waters. The subject itself presents a paradox, forcing us to acknowledge differences while trying to achieve the goal of being treated the same.”
“Another one of my favorite posters at Facebook declares in big red letters, “Done is better than perfect.” I have tried to embrace this motto and let go of unattainable standards. Aiming for perfection causes frustration at best and paralysis at worst.”
“For many men, the fundamental assumption is that they can have both a successful professional life and a fulfilling personal life. For many women, the assumption is that trying to do both is difficult at best and impossible at worst.”
“We hold ourselves back in ways both big and small, by lacking self-confidence, by not raising our hands, and by pulling back when we should be leaning in.”
“In order to protest ourselves from being disliked, we question our abilities and downplay our achievements, especially in the presence of others. We put ourselves down before others can.”
“Fear is at the root of so many of the barriers that women face. Fear of not being liked. Fear of making the wrong choice. Fear of drawing negative attention. Fear of overreaching. Fear of being judged. Fear of failure. And the holy trinity of fear: the fear of being a bad mother/wife/daughter.”
“Looking back, it made no sense for my college friends and me to distance ourselves from the hard-won achievements of earlier feminists. We should have cheered their efforts. Instead, we lowered our voices, thinking the battle was over, and with this reticence we hurt ourselves.”
